A Man About a Dog

A Man About a Dog is a 1947 thriller novel by the British-Australian writer Alec Coppel. Driven to distraction by his wife's repeated affairs, her husband decides to kidnap her latest lover and commit the perfect murder, only to be thwarted by a dog. In 1949 it was adapted into the British film Obsession directed by Edward Dmytryk and starring Robert Newton, Sally Gray and Naunton Wayne. Coppel himself wrote the screenplay. The film was retitled The Hidden Room when it opened in the United States in 1950. Alec Coppel originally wrote the story as a play when he was living in Sydney during World War II. He adapted it into a novel while travelling to London. Coppel titled the play and the novel A Man About a Dog, but in the United States, the novel was titled Over the Line.